It's Time For Shooting Preserves

JAY MUNDY

NEWPORT NEWS — A visit to one of the public shooting preserves the other day started me wondering if the time for such hunting farms isn't already upon us.

Let's face it, things are pretty much that way right now.

The Game Department has thousands of acres scattered around the state that have been set aside exclusively for public hunting, and what are they if not shooting preserves?

And what is your hunt club, really, but a private shooting preserve? Or for that matter, what is any farm where the owner permits hunting.

Regardless what we choose to call such tracts of land, they are where we go to hunt.

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, but, by the same token, if it waddles like a duck, and quacks like a duck, let's don't muddy the water by pretending it's something it's not.

Of course the purists are going to argue there's a big difference between birds released from the pen shortly before the hunter arrives and a wild covey living in the weeds down along the farmer's back forty.

Well, maybe so, but try explaining that difference to a hunter who doesn't have anywhere else to go.

Not everyone is fortunate enough to have the farmer's permission to hunt the back forty, nor the money nor the time to join a hunt club, provided he can even find one with open membership.

Besides, why does it matter whether the birds were raised in a pen or in the weeds along some farmer's back forty?

It's game in your pocket and just as dead.

What it does mean is that literally thousands are getting a chance to go hunting that otherwise wouldn't get to go.

Not all of us can find a farmer who'll give us permission to hunt wild birds.

Frankly, purists can be a royal pain at times, but let's not get into an argument over it. It's far more important to look at what's happening to public preserves than it is nit-picking at them.

In this case, I'm speaking of those public preserves managed by the Game Department, using our money.

Unfortunately, the southeastern corner of Virginia doesn't have enough of these state-managed preserves to satisfy the number of hunters looking for a place to go hunting.

Those we do have here in Tidewater - namely Hog Island, Chickahominy, and Ragged Island - are so packed with hunters during the season that you can see blaze orange behind every tree.

Chickahominy, some 12 to 15 miles west of Williamsburg, is more packed than Hog Island and Ragged Island, mainly because it's bigger.

All I'm saying is we've come down to hunting on preserves - private, public or otherwise - because we're out of land here in the East, and such special farms are all we have left.

I don't have to tell you what's happened to the land. Housing developments are springing up in the country faster than rabbits under a summer moon.

We, naturally, call it progress, and progress is what sent Daniel Boone scampering across the Appalachians.

Unfortunately, we can't escape to a wilderness, because there's no more wilderness left, so we're right back to those precious little patches of land scattered here and there.

The bottom line is there's such a shortage of land, we're even bickering over use of what we've got.

A case that comes to mind is the use of dogs to chase deer. Generations of eastern hunters have enjoyed using dogs to chase deer, but if my sources are correct, there is a move under way in Richmond to stop the practice on at least a couple of the state-managed preserves.

Why?

Well, believe it or not, somebody in Richmond decided the still-hunter didn't have an exclusive place to hunt here in the East, so the only solution is to grab two or three of the few places we do have and accommodate the poor chap.

I'm told the plans call for eliminating dogs from chasing deer on a couple preserves this year, a couple next year, and so on down the line.

I can see where outlawing the dogs might get the road hunters off the highways, and I suppose I see nothing wrong with that.

Still, I'd rather see those same officials get off their duffs and look for more land here in the East than worry about whether barking hounds upset another group of purists.